Some comparison principles for weakly coupled systems of elliptic equations (Q805876)

Let L be a uniformly elliptic, second order operator in some domain \(\Omega\) in \({\mathbb{R}}^ n\), and consider the Dirichlet problem \[ Lu+au+bv+f=0,\quad Lv+cu+dv+g=0\text{ in } \Omega,\quad u=v=0\text{ on } \partial \Omega, \] for the unknown functions u and v. Under suitable conditions on the coefficients for L and on a,b,c,d,f,g, the authors prove various comparison theorems for u and v. For example, their Theorem 1 asserts that if there are positive constants \(b_ 0,c_ 0\) such that \(| b| \leq b_ 0\), \(| c| \leq c_ 0\), -\(\sqrt{b_ 0c_ 0}\geq a\geq d+2\sqrt{b_ 0c_ 0}\) and \(\sqrt{c_ 0}f\geq \sqrt{b_ 0g}\), then \(u\geq 0\) and \(| v| \leq (c_ 0/b_ 0)^{1/2}\) in \(\Omega\). The important new element here is that the functions b and c are allowed to change sign in \(\Omega\).